GDC 2005 has played itself out. It did so with great pomp, some fascinating talks, some entertaining talks, quite a bit of mingling, immodest amounts of high-quality coffee and a considerable number of visits to Lori’s.
Most distinctly the air was loaded with some trepidation over the coming console generation and particularly buzzing with energy during Will Wright’s “Spore” keynote (advocating a solution to next-gen woes in the form of player-generated content). See Jesper’s blog for more on this.
Oh, and here is Jesse Schell, Edward Castronova, and Jim Paul Gee discussing “What Researchers Can and Can’t Tell You About Your Games“. Castronova pitches his game design idea that will “enable social scientists to finally make studies with the precision of physicists” – yep, that’s more or less what he said.